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Louis McKee has poems in recent or forthcoming
issues of Connecticut Review, Brooklyn Review, 5 A.M., Southern Indiana Review,
Paterson Poetry Review, and Rattapallax among others. His work is anthologized
in The New Geography Of Poets (UArk. Pr.). Louis is the author of five poetry
collections: River Architecture (Cynic Press), Right As Rain (2000);
Loose Change (2001); and Near Occasions Of Sin (2005). Pudding House
has recently released a collection of his poems in their Greatest Hits series.
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Her Hand
How small, her hand
minus the rings.
They're back in her room
rolled up in her heavy socks
just in case
someone should go rummaging
through her things.
Her hand, on the tabletop
in a roadside restaurant,
fidgets with the silver--
the spoon isn't clean;
she waits for the coffee
she hopes will give her
something to hold on to.
Before the waitress can return,
I lay my own hand
on hers; how small hers is,
and her fingers, so bare, cold.
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Walking Blues
I don't remember what I used
to walk to, but walking today,
everything aching with age, I hear
Sun House and his National steel guitar,
a walking blues I haven't heard
for many years, and I wonder,
with the music in my head the crutch
my knees need, what I thought of it
then, when I was young and there
was spring in my legs; did I hear, then,
the stinging metal twang, the pain
in his voice; did I even know,
really, what the blues were?
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The Bridge Of Sighs
My ex-wife, before she was
my wife, before she cut
her hair short, cut out her travels
around the world, stood smiling
on the Bridge of Sighs for someone
to photograph, and you can tell
from the look on her face
that it is not an American
tourist and his wife, an older
couple from Milwaukee or Boca
who retired to a Winnebago
but outlived the States and go
now around Europe snapping
photos for lone adventurers
from home, but probably another
young, lone adventurer, one
with an accent, and stories
that made her smile across
all of Europe more than she ever
did here in Philadelphia.
Even her hair was shining,
for Christ's sake, her long hair.
So much water under the bridge.
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2004-2006 the Dublin Quarterly--to see familiar things with unfamiliar eyes!
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